¹ All parenthetical references following quotations from Balthasar are to Balthasar, Hans Urs von, Love Alone is Credible, trans. Dru, Alexander (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969)Google Scholar. The original edition was published as Glaubhaft ist nur Liebe (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1963)Google Scholar.

² Near the end of Love Alone, Balthasar provides another list of the “great figures of Christian spirituality—Irenaeus, Origen, Erigena, Nicholas of Cusa, etc” (123). Thomas goes missing from this list as well. This seems to anticipate his exclusion from the “clerical styles” lovingly read and commended in Herrlichkeit 2/1, though Balthasar claims that Thomas “receives his due in volume 3/1 [volume 4 of the English translation]” (Balthasar, Hans Urs von, My Work: In Retrospect [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993], pp. 82–83)Google Scholar. Not all serious readers have been convinced that he does. “Balthasar's external and peremptory treatment of Aquinas in the fourth volume is also disappointing, even if Balthasar compensates somewhat for this in his interesting confrontation of Aquinas and Heidegger at the end of the fifth volume” O'Regan, (Cyril, “I am Not What I am Because of …,” in Howsare, Rodney A. and Chapp, Larry S., ed., How Balthasar Changed My Mind [New York: Crossroad, 2008], p. 157Google Scholar).

³ These appear at Love Alone, p. 35, p. 90, p. 118. The relative absence of Thomas from Love Alone is partly explained by Balthasar's distaste for the Thomism that he was taught. On Balthasar's early instruction in neo-scholasticism, see Henrici, Peter, “A Sketch of von Balthasar's Life,” in Schindler, David L., ed., Hans Urs von Balthasar: His Life and Work (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991), p. 13Google Scholar. As Fergus Kerr notes, in 1985 he was still attacking “the rationalism of the neoscholastics” (Twentieth-Century Catholic Theologians [Oxford: Blackwell, 2007], 122n6Google Scholar, quoting the introduction of Theo-Logic, vol. 1, trans. Walker, Adrian J. [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000], p. 20)Google Scholar.

⁴ Why privilege Love Alone? Beyond its evident relevance to our theme, the text is a good way into Balthasar's thought as a whole. As David Moss notes, it is a text “which in many respects presents, in severe concentration, the ambition of his great theological triptych” (“The Saints,” in Oakes, Edward T. S.J., and Moss, David, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Hans Urs von Balthasar [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004], p. 82)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵ See Balthasar, Hans Urs von, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetic, Vol. 2: Studies in Theological Style: Clerical Styles, trans. Louth, Andrew, McDonagh, Francis and McNeil, Brian C.R.V. and ed. Riches, John (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1984), pp. 95–143CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Balthasar published Herrlichkeit 2/1 in 1962, just before Glaubhaft ist nur Liebe.

⁶ Balthasar, Hans Urs von, My Work: In Retrospect (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), p. 11Google Scholar.

⁷ See Summa Theologiae 1a2ae 27.2 ad 2; 2a2ae 23.6 and 27.4.

⁸ First Vatican Council, s.3, c.1. Compare the passages quoted by Balthasar at Theo-Logic, vol. 2, trans. Walker, Adrian J. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press 2003), pp. 99–102Google Scholar.

⁹ Late in life, Balthasar commented that Barth “perhaps never noticed how much a little book like Glaubhaft ist nur Liebe (Love Alone) sought to be fair to him and represents perhaps the closest approach to his position from the Catholic side” (My Work: In Retrospect, 90). In his later work, Barth himself says that if terms such as “wholly other” are not thoroughly clarified, they “might just as well fit a dead idol” (Barth, Karl, The Humanity of God [Louisville: John Knox Press, 1960], p. 72)Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Balthasar, Hans Urs von, The Glory of the Lord, vol. 4, The Realm of Metaphysics in Antiquity, trans. C.R.V.C.R.V.McNeil, Brian, Louth, Andrew, Saward, John, Williams, Rowan and Davies, Oliver and ed. Riches, John (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), pp. 393–94Google Scholar.

¹¹ For insight into Balthasar's pedagogical impulse and its inseparability from love, see Francesca Murphy, “Truth Grounded in Love,” in How Balthasar Changed My Mind, pp. 129.

¹² All translations of Thomas Aquinas into English are my own. Translations are of the Latin text as it appears in Summa Theologiae, Ottawa Institute of Medieval Studies Edition, 5 vols. (Ottawa: Dominican College of Ottawa, 1941–45). All parenthetical references following quotations of Thomas are to the Secunda Secundae, indicating Question, Article, and division within the Article. A complete translation of the Questions on charity in the 2a2ae is forthcoming in Yale University Press's “Rethinking the Western Tradition” series: Thomas Aquinas: Questions on Love and Charity, trans. Robert Miner, with interpretive essays by Mark Jordan, Dominic Doyle, Sheryl Overmyer and Jeffrey Bernstein.

¹³ What would Thomas make of Balthasar's claim that to speak of charity as “a” virtue implies our ability to “possess” charity, and so stand above it? He is aware of the problem; he even builds it into the very dialectic by which he establishes that charity is a virtue. Though charity is an “accidental habit,” it is nonetheless “worthier than the soul, so far as it is a certain participation in the Holy Spirit” (23.3 ad 3).

¹⁴ Augustine himself did not use the phrase “splendid vices,” but the phrase has become a topos for self-described Augustinians.

¹⁵ Though Balthasar here contrasts philosophy and faith sharply, he contests attempts to construe “faith” and “knowledge” as opposites (Love Alone, pp. 114–15). “An attitude of faith is immanent in the attitude of knowledge” (Theo-Logic, vol. 1, trans. Walker, Adrian J. [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000], p. 260)Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Thus Peter Henrici: “He does not understand himself as a ‘Thomist’ nor does he want to back up his own thought at all costs by means of quotations from Thomas” (“The Philosophy of Hans Urs von Balthasar,” 162). See also the insightful article by Buckley, James, “Balthasar's Use of the Theology of Aquinas,” The Thomist 59 (1995), pp. 517–545CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This passage notwithstanding, Buckley argues that Henrici generally “underplays the oppositions between the two” (p. 524).

¹⁷ In Theodramatik 4, Balthasar takes brief note of Anders Nygren's opposition of eros and agape, without fundamentally challenging it; instead, he speculates that “the only part of earthly love to survive will be the heavenly love that has become incarnate in it.” This is a love “that has become selfless and that loves solely in God” (Theo-Drama, Volume 5: The Last Act, trans. Harrison, Graham [San Francisco: Ignatius, 1998], p. 505Google Scholar).

¹⁸ That Balthasar genuinely respects Thomas is not in question. He knows of no better way to praise Karl Barth than to say that we would “have to go back to Thomas Aquinas to find a similar spirit, one free from the constraints of every tenseness and narrowness, combining superior gifts of understanding with goodness of heart.” (The Theology of Karl Barth, trans. Oakes, Edward T. S.J., [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992], p. 26Google Scholar). But regarding love, Thomas does not count for Balthasar as one of the highest spirits.

¹⁹ Of the “three central theological tractates,” Balthasar claims, De deo trino (as he calls it) “gave Thomas an excellent formal training” but had “no further role to play in shaping the course of his Summa.” What Balthasar takes to be “theology's propria principia”— the Trinity, Christ, and the Church—had, he claims, “little structuring impact in his theology” (The Theology of Karl Barth, p. 263). Balthasar's assumption that the entrance of Christ is not crucial for the structure of the Summa, and therefore for Thomas's thinking as a whole, is highly questionable. Similarly problematic is the unqualified assertion that Thomas “emphasizes thinking from below up” and that he presents us with “a methodology that is predominantly philosophical, whose use in theology is quite limited” (The Theology of Karl Barth, pp. 263–64). One might also mention the questionability of describing sections of the Summa as “tractates.”

²⁰ By the time he comes to write Theodramatik 3, Balthasar pushes kenosis as far back as possible within the life of the Trinity. “It is possible to say, with Bulgakov, that the Father's self-utterance in the generation of the Son is an initial ‘kenosis’ within the Godhead that underpins all subsequent kenosis. For the Father strips himself, without remainder, of his Godhead and hands it over to the Son; he ‘imparts’ to the Son all that is his” (Theo-Drama, vol. 4: The Action, trans. Harrison, Graham [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994], p. 323Google Scholar). For useful commentary on this aspect of Balthasar, see Wolfgang Treitler, “True Foundations of Authentic Theology,” in Hans Urs von Balthasar: His Life and Work, pp. 171–73; Rowan Williams, “Balthasar on the Trinity,” in The Cambridge Companion to Hans Urs von Balthasar, pp. 38–42; Kilby, Karen, Balthasar: A (Very) Critical Introduction (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), pp. 99–100 and 119Google Scholar.

²¹ Compare Barth, Karl: “A love of God which does not involve also the required love of the neighbor is not the required love of God” (Church Dogmatics IV/2 §68, ed. Bromiley, G.W. and Torrance, T.F. [Edinburgh: T.&T. Clark, 1958], p. 732)Google Scholar.

²² The inner man/outer man distinction of 2 Corinthians 4 is foundational for Luther's 1520 text Christian Liberty. Like Thomas, Luther links spiritual health to the resolute subordination of the outer man to the inner man. Unlike Thomas, he does not identify this subordination with an appropriate love of self.

²³ Balthasar, Hans Urs von, The Glory of the Lord, vol. 5, The Realm of Metaphysics in the Modern Age, trans. Davies, Oliver, Louth, Andrew, McNeil, Brian C.R.V, Saward, John and Williams, Rowan (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991), p. 31Google Scholar. For suggestions aimed at bringing “whylessness” closer to an understanding shared by Thomas, see Walker, Adrian, “Hans Urs von Balthasar as a Master of Theological Renewal,” Communio 32 (2005), p. 534Google Scholar.

²⁴ Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Gay Science §228, trans. Kaufmann, Walter (New York: Vintage, 1974), p. 212Google Scholar.

²⁵ See Luther, Martin, Christian Liberty, ed. Grimm, Harold J. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1957), p. 22Google Scholar.

²⁶ Jung, C.G., Nietzsche's Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934–1939, ed. Jarrett, James L., vol.1 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), p. 100Google Scholar.

²⁷ Jung, Nietzsche's Zarathustra, p. 102.

²⁸ Barth, Karl, The Word of God and the Word of Man, trans. Horton, Douglas (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1978), p. 118Google Scholar.

²⁹ See Francis, Pope, Evangelii Gaudium §94 (London: CTS, 2013), p. 54Google Scholar.